Originally posted by Civilrightstoday1:I am an African American woman who is very interested in traveling abroad and I wanted to know are the trips culturally friendly?

Well I think the truth is that no matter where you go, there are always some unfortunate portion of people who are racially biased. Looking at my tour photos, we actually didn’t have any black people in my group (mostly White & Asian) but the subject of race or skin colour simply was not an issue. Nobody really cared what colour your skin was. To me, it wasn’t an issue of friendliness or sensitivity; it was more like colour-blindness. Colour didn’t matter enough for anyone to notice!

I was particulary worried about this considering I have brown skin and was flying into terrorist-wary London. But I had zero problems at the airport.

As to the issue of culture as a separate thing from skin colour, I observed absolutely no negativity in that area. We had a few from South Africa and one from Quebec; People were more interested to know about their lives and how their culture perceived Europe as opposed to anything else. I got questions about how much French I had to learn at school because I am from Canada.

The only kind of discrimination I saw at all was from the customs people in my own country when I got home! Aside from that, it was simply not an issue.

I think that once you start to travel you’ll find that people who want to travel and see the world are open minded and interested in other people and cultures. You’ll be on a bus with 50 other people so yea, you could end up someone who isn’t very open minded. While I can’t think of any African Americans that I might have toured with, I’ve toured with a wide variety of people and haven’t seen any problems arise.

hi, im a black dude from the u.s. i was wondering about the same thing. there happened to be two black girls on my trip but they came together as friend so they spent most of their time solo. so it was just be and everyone else basically. it was cool and it wasn’t a problem at all. everyone was nice and if you make an effort, then people will make an effort back to you. lets’ face it, sometimes you get more flack or standoffishness sometimes internally. so i had a great time and i met a lot of people from different backgrounds and races. also, i’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve been “the only black” somewhere, so just go into it with the same attitude you do everything else. if you are nice and open and friendly, generally speaking most people black, white, asian, will recipricate.